


Cut Your Teeth

by solysal



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solysal/pseuds/solysal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liara T’soni was an exception. It will only be later, shackled to an electric chair singeing currents down the paper-thin folds of his neck, that Feron will realize how much she made a habit of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut Your Teeth

When he first met her, a human phrase snuck to mind. Feron never really had cause to call someone green behind the ears. The first reason is obvious. He was a drell: green came with the territory. The second is less so, but caught up in an open secret to anyone with a passing awareness of the Shadow Broker. He trafficked dangerous information, and his clientele, at least by the time they wound up knocking at his door, had already cut their teeth in shallower waters.

Liara T’soni was an exception. It will only be later, shackled to an electric chair singeing currents down the paper-thin folds of his neck, that he will realize how much she made a habit of it.

“I hear you’re one of the best,” she said, her voice a careful mock-up of professionalism and experience. She didn’t look anything like one of the Citadel’s heroes. Then again, he supposed, neither did her commander. Open space had a nasty way of desiccating a body. “Can you tell me anything about Shepard?”

“Maybe.”

The details of the assignment left a bad taste in his mouth, sharp and bitter like the brine on Kahje. He knew the Broker had Shepard’s body. The corpse was leverage for something--a small part of him shuddered at legends older than the Asari matriarchs--and both the Illusive Man and the Shadow Broker were placing their bets.

“The Commander,” he said at length, “is neither dead nor alive.”

He hadn’t culled a living saying no to the Illusive Man--leave alone the Shadow Broker--but Liara’s eyes widened just enough that he almost wished he had.

 

\---

 

After Cerberus dropped them off, she slammed him into a wall. He could pick out the dull crack of his ribs under the blue flare of her biotics, raw as the measured threats she counted off the fingers of her free hand one by one.  

He was, he realized, urgently, desperately afraid. She was a member of Commander Shepard’s crew. She was Matriarch Benezia’s daughter. She had struck down her mother to save the galaxy and hadn’t looked back.

Liara T’Soni may have been quick to trust, but she was no less dangerous for it. (She didn’t kill him, but he couldn’t quite talk her into letting him go either.)

 

\---

 

The double-crosses had gotten a little ridiculous by the time Feron came clean. His neck snapped against the far side of the room almost instantly, all the air smashed out of his lungs--no, no. He shook the memory out from under his skin. The Liara in front of him just tilted her head. “So you’re a triple agent?” she asked. 

He took a moment to catalogue the Blue Suns and Blood Pack mercs sprawled out on the floor around him before he answered. Eight snapshots from the side of Omega only Aria T’Loak could stomach--unconscious, dead, or worse--and Liara’s handwork completely. No wonder she hadn’t crushed him into the ground this time.

“Let’s just say even I know the Collectors are bad news.”

She smiled like she trusted him, and if he wasn’t still trying to figure out exactly how much bigger this was than anything he was used to, he would have smiled back. He handed her the data from the Allingon Base because he was still trying to swallow that sour kick off his tongue. He wanted to tell her that, with their odds, only one of them was walking away from this alive.

He couldn’t find the words, of course, until Liara was within running distance of their ship and Tazzik was trying awfully hard to bash his head into a guardrail.

“Go!” he shouted.

She did.

 

\--

 

His mother used to tell him stories of the old gods: Amonkira, master of the hunt, fierce Arashu and her Siha, Kalahira, her jaws open wide at the bottom of every ocean. He forgot them when he was older, after Hanar Enkindlers and Asari goddesses had sucked the wonder from them and left them bloodless in the dust.

He screamed every one of their names while he was in the Broker’s keep. To Amonkira, that he be found, to Arashu, for vengeance, to Kalahira, that she take him away. When he exhausted them, he called for his mother.

 

\--

“Feron!”

At first, he thought she was a memory. He forced himself to blink away the old echoes of his name on her lips. She’d never said it quite like this before.

He tried to map out an explanation--that she had found him on a ship chasing the eye of a Halagaz storm, that she had successfully blasted a path through the Broker’s base--and the number of impossibilities involved built a pretty solid case against the idea that she was _there_. Easier to write it off as a dying man’s daydream. He answered her anyway. “Liara?”

“We’ll get you out of here.”

The human at her back had faded scars and a gun trained to Feron’s skull. The way Liara looked back, just for a second, before trying her luck with the console only spoke to the obvious. If he wasn't neck-deep in a newly active death trap aside, he would’ve waved.  This was great. Everything was great. _Especially_ the part were Liara electrocuted him (accidentally, but still). On the bright side, it gave him pretty strong evidence that he wasn't tripping his way through the worst hallucination ever, eidetic memory or no. 

“We’ll be back for you, Feron,” Liara said.

The next time he laid eyes on her--dizzy and delirious and still not entirely sure that any of it was actually happening--she was the Shadow Broker.

 

\---

 

They needed a full two weeks to do more than just reproduce the old Broker’s designs. Liara was flying half-blind with an absurd volume of highly sensitive information, and Feron was frankly terrified of laying a finger on the existing protocols. He told her as much, when Liara laid out her plans. It was one thing to pick up where the old guy left off. It was another thing to drive off the road.

“The Reapers are coming, Feron, and  I am going to do everything in my power to stop them.” The set of her shoulders didn’t leave any room for argument.

Feron swallowed a grimace. He toggled the window shutters and wished he had it in him to at least sit on the fence a bit before he charged after her into the end of the world. He was still tallying all the ways the Liara that freed him wasn’t quite the one who hired him two years ago (she fashioned armor out of all the angles and edges she used to keep under wraps), but she had beaten the Shadow Broker before she took the job for herself, and she had come back for Shepard before she came back for him.

Maybe that’s why he’s not all that surprised when she wound her arms around him the next day and told him he didn’t have to stay. “You’ve more than done the job I paid you for. You’re a good friend, Feron.”

He’s slower to return the embrace than he should be--there will always be a part of him hardwired to associate touch with pain--but when he did, he grinned. The weight of her temple against his cheek was the realest thing he’d felt in a long time. “You know, when I met you, I never dreamed you were going to end up being my boss.”

The look on her face when she stepped back didn’t come close to making the past two years worth it. Feron liked to think it helped, though.

 

\---

 

To the best of Feron’s knowledge, Liara T’Soni was the third Shadow Broker. None of her predecessors had any contingencies in place for the collapse of all known civilization. The Reapers were entirely new territory, unbroken as a Noverian tundra. He watched her back while she patched the holes in her networks and shuttled planetloads of resources around a crumbling galaxy.

Oddly enough, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine any place he’d rather be.


End file.
